Saturday, August 30, 2014

By Tom Haydon | The Star-Ledger August 26, 2014 at 3:33 PM, updated August 27, 2014 at 9:52 AM

ELIZABETH — Maria Fernandes worked four jobs, including shifts at two different Dunkin Donuts.

Often she drove from job to job, stopping along the road to catch a couple hours sleep, police said. She kept a container of gasoline in her 2001 Kia Sportage because occasionally she ran out of gas, authorities said.

Early Monday, the 32-year-old Newark woman pulled into a lot off Route 1 & 9 in Elizabeth for a nap. She apparently left the car running and was overcome by carbon monoxide mixed with fumes from the gas can that had overturned, police said. Fernandes was found dead in the car about eight hours later.

"This sounds like someone who tried desperately to work and make ends meet, and met with a tragic accident," Elizabeth police Lt. Daniel Saulnier said.

When a young, decent, hard-working woman, who just wants to get a little ahead in life and improve her economic condition, has to die trying to do so, it is most goddamn definitely a condemnation of a society that has lost it's moral compass, and as such, forfeited the right to be running around the world telling people of other countries how to manage their cultures and societies.

American Plutocrats enabled Maria Fernandes' untimely demise by deliberately manipulating the economic factors of our society such that a once thriving middle class is now a hollowed out shell of it's former self and the ranks of the destitute and working poor have swelled to historic, and perhaps irreversible proportions and people are left fighting over the few shitty, poor paying jobs like feral dogs fighting over a soup bone. Meanwhile, the net worth of the Plutocrats has skyrocketed, and they are busy sowing discord among the masses with their "us vs. them" and "liberal vs. conservative" social issues flim-flammery, when in fact, liberals and conservatives have a lot more in common, when it comes to economic factors, than the Plutocrats dare to let on.

It's the same old ploy that the Plutocrats and Oligarchs have been utilizing since time immemorial -- employing cynical political tactics to keep the masses at each other's throats over social and ideological issues, while they steal the national treasury blind.

And it does have to be noted that a certain faction of the non-Plutocrat masses seems to be on the side of, if not outright sanctioning the underhanded activities of the wealth mongers -- yes -- The Gadfly is talking to you conservative America.

Why are you conservatives so intent on further empowering people like the Koch brothers and the Wall Street con artists and the military industrial complex robber barons to accumulate ever more wealth and power for their few numbers, at the expense of the quality of life of the rest of your fellow Americans, including a great many of your own ideological adherents? Why? Just so you can deny a gay couple who love each other from getting a piece of paper which says their union of love is just as acceptable to the state as anyone else's? Why? Just so you can prevent some poor, pregnant woman from bringing a zygote to a full-term, unwanted baby that your society, once it's out of it's mother's womb, will turn it's back on and let it live a life of impoverished misery? Why? Just so that you can delude yourselves in to believing that your biblical world view is anything other than a colossally fucked up, regressive and cruel system of convictions as opposed to being the benign, humane and loving screed that your Lord & Savior actually advocated for?

This is why The Gadfly invests as much time and energy in to combating these modern-day conservatives. Because The Gadfly believes with every fiber of his being that what happened to Maria Fernandes should not needlessly have to happen to any other American.

But it's not just about preventing future Maria Fernandeses, it is also about this nation's future for our children and grandchildren. The Gadfly's children and grandchildren. It is about democracy and leaving a more humane and socially and economically just world behind us for the generations to come. If that is something that conservatives want to fight against, then they should not be shocked when that civil war for which they have been pining for finally arrives and they find themselves, just like this nation's previous civil war, once again, on the wrong side of the issues and history -- and by proxy -- the losing side of that war.

Monday, August 25, 2014

It truly does underscore the bizarro world that these conservatives live in . . .

More than a week after Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) was indicted on two felony counts, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan shared her concerns about the case on national television yesterday. The exchange was one of my favorite of any Sunday show this year.

NOONAN: I think, yes, it was local Democratic overreach. It’s just a dumb case. I don’t think it should have been brought. Naturally he looks like someone who is…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the prosecutor is a former Republican, I think.

NOONAN: That may be. But when you look at this case, it just looks crazy.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Unsurprisingly, the elites in our society are always the last ones to figure out why the teeming masses are teeming, and boiling, and for what reasons.

Observe:

As a former big city mayor of a racially diverse city, Cleveland, Ohio, I can understand the cross currents sweeping through Ferguson, Missouri.

We are at a moment of national crisis in the way our domestic law enforcement is being conducted. The killing of an unarmed civilian by a law enforcement officer is, sadly, not unique. But the police response to the protests has provided a powerful cautionary moment for America. The militarization of local police has led to the arrival today in Ferguson of the actual military, the National Guard.

This crisis comes from:

1) The erosion of a principle in federal law, Posse Comitatus, meant to restrict the use of the military in civilian law enforcement; 2) The Pentagon's dispersal of military equipment to domestic police units, which has increased since 9/11;3) Military-style police training reliant upon weaponry, as opposed to peace keeping, including skills development for de-escalation of violent tensions.

An unarmed, African-American teenager was shot and killed by a policeman. As people protested, the Ferguson police response evoked images of an occupying army come home.

The show of military-style force in an American city has created a huge backlash because the underlying concerns for justice have not been addressed. Moreover, Americans don't want armies patrolling their streets, attempting to stifle public dissent.

Dennis J. Kucinich

Former 16-year member of the U.S. Congress and two-time U.S. presidential candidate

Welcome to the real world Congressman -- a day late and a dollar short albeit -- but it's the world that the rest of us plebes have been watching and discoursing about for more than just the past week as a result of the Ferguson, Missouri incident -- that said, welcome nonetheless.

Believe The Gadfly when he tells you dear readers, that it does not bring him any satisfaction in noting that The Gadfly and many other more prominent social bloggers and journalists have been talking about the creeping militarization of the civilian police corp in this country for the better part of a couple of years now.

In fact - author and journalist Radley Balko even wrote a prominent book about it called "Rise of the Warrior Cop" and was even given space on the pages of the conservative Wall Street Journal Online to discuss the disturbing trend a year ago.

There truly is something sinister about transferring this nation's deadly war toys - toys left over from our failed international military ventures - to small town civilian police organizations across the country. There is no sensible explanation for these podunk civilian law enforcement agencies to have armored tank vehicles and military style assault weaponry - this is of course - unless the explanation is being mouthed by someone who is an embedded propagandist for the military industrial complex themselves, and has a vested interest in it all.

Somebody is making some money on this nefarious trend, no doubt - because that is always the driving force behind shit like this.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the military industrial complex apparently isn't satisfied with the revenues they have ill gotten from the failed Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and the Obama administration is doing it's best to keep the military at bay from getting actively involved in the Syrian, Ukrainian and Libyan clusterfucks, and so in order to keep their cash flow flowing until they can pay some new politicians to gin up the next manufactured overseas war, they came up with the brilliant idea of selling their surplus war toys, at fantastic discount of course, to the federal government with the stipulation that they dole it out to the civilian policing authorities across the nation.

And was it too far-fetched of a prognostication to predict that eventually those war toys would be used on the very people that these civilian, tax payer funded police agencies are charged with "protecting and serving?"

This shit needs to stop -- no debate, no compromise. Our civilian police officers are not ad hoc war draftees who report to the Department of Defense. They report to us, We The People. The Sooner our politicians get that very unambiguous concept through their thick, bought and paid for skulls, the sooner this nation's civilian police forces can get back to the job of implementing their original charter which is the serving and protecting ALL of the human beings of their communities.

The Gadfly was amusing himself by reading this whimsical article about how Sarah Palin is salivating at the thought of being on the cusp of launching her pay-per-view "television" channel, cleverly named "The Sarah Palin Channel" -- and then The Gadfly came across this gem:

And, as both Rick Perlstein and Alex Pareene have noted, one of the animating principles of the conservative movement over the last 40 years has been soaking every last dollar out of people whose intellectual incuriosity has never been an impediment to further rage and paranoia.

And The Gadfly was dumbstruck as to how such a simple observation could, in the fell swoop of a single sentence, concisely summarize everything one needs to know about the true motives and agenda of the modern day conservative movement and it's ringleaders.

It really honestly and totally is all about fleecing the rubes of their hard earned money by manufacturing outrage and scandal and fear and anxiety and hatred in the minds of people who quite frankly just do not have the required mental aptitude to calmly and judiciously analyze the world around them and then form their very own enlightened views of that world.

And so they enthusiastically allow the Palins and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs and the Fox "News" jackals and the screechers on AM hate radio to do most, if not all, of their thinking for them. So naturally then, the rubes, as compensation to their "proxy" thinkers for relieving them of the innate burden of having to exercise their intellectual facility on a regular basis, choose to shower Palin, Beck and the rest with their gift of money.

The Gadfly supposes that on some primitive level, there is some benignly charming value to this pitifully symbiotic relationship between the money grubbing grifters and their marks, and it is the rube's own money after all, and they do have the right to give it away to already wealthy charlatans like Beck and Palin if they wish, but at what cost?

Is it really worth the price to the rubes of handing over their paychecks to these conniving people in exchange for the right to remain blissfully ignorant, delusional and proudly hateful just because they cannot stand the idea that some dirty fucking hippies just might be right about the world and that they are incontrovertibly on the wrong side of not only the major societal issues of the day, but history as well?

It truly must suck major ass to be that much of a loser in The Gadfly's not-so-humble opinion.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

As The Gadfly alluded to in prior posts, he is content with leaving the yeoman's work of commenting on the Ferguson, Missouri incident to those public wordsmith's whose prose and pensive eloquence far outshine anything that The Gadfly could aspire to scribble on his shitty little blog.

Therefore dear readers, The Gadfly dutifully hands the keyboard over to the inimitable Charles Pierce.

An excerpt:

They left the body in the street.

Dictators leave bodies in the street.

Petty local satraps leave bodies in the street.

Warlords leave bodies in the street.

A police officer shot Michael Brown to death. And they left his body in the street. For four hours. Bodies do not lie in the street for four hours. Not in an advanced society. Bodies lie in the street for four hours in small countries where they have perpetual civil war. Bodies lie in the street for four hours on back roads where people fight over the bare necessities of simple living, where they fight over food and water and small, useless parcels of land. Bodies lie in the street for four hours in places in which poor people fight as proxies for rich people in distant places, where they fight as proxies for the men who dig out the diamonds, or who drill out the oil, or who set ancient tribal grudges aflame for modern imperial purposes that are as far from the original grudges as bullets are from bows. Those are the places where they leave bodies in the street, as object lessons, or to make a point, or because there isn't the money to take the bodies away and bury them, or because nobody gives a damn whether they are there or not. Those are the places where they leave bodies in the street.

Friday, August 22, 2014

The Gadfly for the most part has been studiously avoiding in depth commentary on the Ferguson, Missouri story -- for the most part because legions of opinionizers, some eloquent, many more brutish, from across the socio-political spectrum, have already said just about everything of relevance that needed to be said about the story.

But leave it to the puppetoons over at Rupert Murdoch's clown show, Fox "News" to fan the flames of an already well stoked fire and to provoke The Gadfly in to taking to the pages of his shitty little blog to respond to Fox's rank inanity and unprincipled vulgarity.

Watch as the well-worn human dildo who goes by the stage name of Sean Hannity interviews a Ferguson, Missouri political figure and delves in to the abyss of his own depraved and vainglorious mind:

Let's review, shall we?:

Hannity kicked off an interview with Democratic committeewoman Patricia Bynes by pointing out that she was not present when black teenager Michael Brown, who was unarmed, was shot by a white police officer on Aug. 9.

"You were not there. So you don't know if this case is about police brutality, do you?" he asked.

"No, I do know that this case is about police brutality," Bynes said. "We're talking about excessive force here. There is no way that a young man that is unarmed should have two shots in his head. That's a little excessive. That's what we mean when we say police brutality--"

"Let me educate you, committeewoman," Hannity cut in.

"No, I don't need your kind of education," Bynes shot back.

"Let me educate you about the legal system in America," the Fox host continued over Bynes. "You can try to talk over me, but let me tell you in our system of justice a person is innocent until proven guilty."

So basically, the well-worn human dildo (because he looks like one) who goes by the stage name of Sean Hannity, thought it would be fun to bring on a black local politician from Ferguson and attempt his usual bullying interview tactics to impress the KKK contingent of his viewership audience, whom by the way likely make up a majority of that wretched Fox demographic.

Of course the human dildo didn't countenance the black politician not putting up with any of the human dildo's smug bullshit and therefore the interview quickly devolved in to the human dildo hauling out his heavy weaponry of smug sarcasm to blunt more or less being labeled a know-nothing fucker (not in those words exactly, but the sentiment was clear enough) by an interviewee whom he obviously, and as it turns out mistakenly, viewed as an intellectually inferior individual to his self.

And oh did The Gadfly laugh heartily when the human dildo Hannity raised the squeaky tone of his pre-pubescent voice and wagged his cowardly little finger at the black lady and said, "let me educate you about the legal system in America." Hardy-har-har! Sure Hannity, but first regale us plebes with the knowledge of which higher institution it was where you procured your law degree from. And no -- Walmart does not count.

The human dildo's final parting shot at the black lady was his admonition to her that, "let me tell you, in our system of justice a person is innocent until proven guilty." Oh really human dildo? Was that the presumption which was granted to 18 year old Michael Brown prior to, or just after, bullets #6 and #7 from that cop's gun blew his brains out all over a Ferguson, Missouri residential street?

Sunday, August 17, 2014

The Gadfly thunk for a bit as to whether he wanted to weigh in on the civil unrest going on in Ferguson, Missouri on the heels of yet another seemingly unwarranted police killing of an unarmed, minority youth, but after a brief bout of reflection The Gadfly determined that there truly wasn't a whole lot more he could say than what a whole lot of other smarter and more eloquent observers haven't already said.

What has been predictable so far though, other than the local yokel cop's overreacting to an incident which was precipitated by the actions of one of their own officers grossly overreacting to an an easily manageable and minor situation, is the right wing's knee-jerk view that the whole mess must be the sole fault of the thug 18 year old Michael Brown, because you know, all young, black males are criminally suspect until they prove their innocence.

And of course the right wingers conveniently ignore the reality that Michael Brown isn't available to defend himself due to the fact that a police issued weapon splattered his brains all over a Ferguson, Missouri residential street.

The truth of the matter of course is that the conservative right, for all of their chest thumping bluster, really doesn't give a shit about "rights" and "fairness" and "justice" --- that is --- until a perceived injustice afflicts one of their own kind.

Observe:

Laura Ingraham's opinion on the merits of a protest movement seem to vary considerably from month to month. Ingraham recently characterized protestors in Ferguson, Missouri as a "lynch mob" and downplayed the story as a "local, criminal" story, but in April the radio host helped to elevate the standoff between scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy and federal law enforcement agents while suggesting his supporters' violent threats against the government constituted a mere "act of civil disobedience."

Police in Ferguson, Missouri are currently using heavy force to crack down on citizens protesting the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, at the hands of an officer of the mostly white St. Louis County Police Department. Journalists have been arrested on baseless or suspect justifications, and events in the St. Louis suburb have exploded into a national news story.

You see how that conservative game works dear readers? If you're a minority and you publicly gather in numbers to protest a perceived injustice against one of your community members, you are part of a "lynch mob" involved in "criminal" behavior. On the other hand, if you are a good ol' white boy gathering with a bunch of other good ol' white boys, and armed to the teeth no less, to protest a perceived injustice against one of your brethren, then Laura Ingraham views that as a mere "act of civil disobedience."

Sure -- Laura Ingraham is a sad-sack, bird-brained little troll who has convinced herself that her twisted, nutbag views are relevant to, much less agreed upon by, a majority of Americans, but still -- where is the mainstream media's response to such nonsense? Ingraham is both a Fox News and ABC News contributor -- why? -- who the fuck knows -- it's certainly not because she knows shit about anything, or has much of anything resembling intellectual value to share with Americans on important issues such as this one.

What is quite clear is that the right has seemingly already passed judgement on the deceased 18 year old Michael Brown and exonerated the Ferguson cop who unloaded his weapon on the unarmed young man on a city street in broad daylight. As far as The Gadfly is concerned, that is all the more reason to fight to keep the conservative movement and it's smug prophets from gaining any more political power than it already has and see to it that they never aspire to anything more than being patriotic legends in their own minds.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Nobody can say that The Gadfly did not attempt to warn the Republicans about throwing their lot in with the Tea Party lunatics. You lay down with fleas and they infest every nook and cranny of your body and then bite and suck the lifeblood out of you.

Observe:

The Tea Party's Prayer

By AnnaWolfe August 12, 2014

The Tea Party’s Prayer:

“We ask for your blessing upon the conservatives in this state, that they might stand strong and firm. Father, we even ask for you to bless our enemies, and Lord they are truly our enemies that head the Republican Party and the whole political establishment.

‘We’re asking, Father, for two things. We’re asking, Father, that you would expose them, set division amongst them, set them one against another, bring confusion and fear into their camp, into their thinking, for the purpose of pulling them down, for casting them down out of their high offices and reducing them, Lord, to having no power in this state.

“So, Lord, that you might raise up and seek the righteous in the positions of power that this state might once more be a state that honors you in all that it does.”

“Father, we’re asking that in all of the tribulations were asking you to bring upon them, that it would work change in their heart—that you would use it to bring true Godly sorrow, that they might truly repent for their iniquity and their wickedness, for that they would be restored to you, that you would have honor in the state of Mississippi for the great works that you’ve done in correcting and purifying the government and rescuing and saving the worst of us.”

I’m not this good at satire. These words, in this order, were truly spoken when Mississippi Tea Party Chairman Roy Nicholson included them in his opening prayer at a Tea Party meeting on Monday.

Something tells me this is not how Christianity works.

Still, the crowd gave a generous “mhm” as the man on the stage asked God to smite the GOP.

As The Gadfly has been trying to tell you all dear readers from the beginning, The Tea Party isn't now, and never has been, about the preservation and future success of the Grand Old Party. It's all about it's own nakedly cruel social agenda, it's own warped view of the role that their fundamentalist religion plays in a modern, secular society, and pimping it's own intellectually vacuous and morally bankrupt candidates. And more than anything, the Tea Party is all about sowing division between those who think and hate like they do, and the rest of us -- the evil "other."

Boehner and the GOP poobahs made a devil's pact when they invited the Teabaggers in to their tent without vetting their motives and their agenda, not unlike how John McCain and his people allowed the religious right nutbag crowd to push Sarah Palin on him as his running mate in 2008, without vetting who she was and what she was all about, along with the state of her mental faculties and whether they were up to the task of possibly being the leader of the world's most powerful democracy. Well - frighteningly - we found out who she is and what she's all about -- she's a right wing, fundamentalist religious crackpot who in a sane world would never have gotten within a light year's distance of being a potential heartbeat away from the presidency.

But now the flea-infested chickens are coming home to roost for the GOP. The Teabaggers are none too happy that the establishment Republicans aren't bowing down to lick their jack boots quickly, and subserviently enough, so like the rabid, flea-infested dogs they are, they are turning on and biting the Republican hands that were extended to them in, even if cynically motivated, friendship.

Quite frankly, it couldn't happen to a more Machiavellian bunch of spiteful bastards in The Gadfly's humble view.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

But of course -- who doesn't mind the thought of their drinking and bathing water being reclassified as a flammable liquid?

Observe:

Don't Worry, Water Is Supposed To Catch Fire, Republican Says

The Huffington Post | By Jonathan Feldman08/14/2014 4:26 pm EDT

"If you go back in history and look at how the Indians traveled, they traveled to the 'burning waters,' and that was methane in the water, and that was for warmth in the wintertime," Colorado state senator Randy Baumgardner (R) told a conservative activist in a video posted Monday. "So a lot of people, if they'll just trace back the history, they'll know how this is all -- how a lot of it's propaganda."

Baumgardner, being interviewed for activist Gordon Klingenschmitt's daily television show "Pray in Jesus Name," was responding to what he perceives as ignorance from people who criticize natural gas development.

Honestly now --- where does the GOP keep finding these whack job losers for their party representatives??

No --- seriously --- what kind of mentally challenged asshat would publicly profess the belief that Americans shouldn't worry if the water in their homes, with which they and their families drink and bathe in, is flammable because some old native American legend said it was alright?

And since the media is always playing the gutless game of "both sides do it," please, someone, anyone -- tell The Gadfly who on the Democratic side of the political fence makes such imbecilic claims in public?

The Gadfly wouldn't pay much attention if bullshit like this was just an infrequently occurring anomaly, but that is not the case -- these right wing buffoons are spewing crazy shit like this into the public discourse on a daily basis, and nobody is calling them out on their asininity. For the sake of this nation's future, those who give a shit about that future need to unite and confront these morons and marginalize them and their dangerously stupid views. They've gotten away with this flim-flammery for way too long. At the very least, institute measures to prevent them from breeding en masse.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

This is the ugly face, all smug denials notwithstanding, of your modern-day, American conservative ideological movement:

A California business owner has been getting death threats ever since he took in a family of refugees because the city of Murrieta was refusing to help them.

Mark Lane told KGTV that he was moved to help a family fleeing violence in Guatemala after his 5-year-old son asked why residents in Murrieta were blocking buses of refugees from entering their town.

"He asked me why the people were mad at the buses and I was like, it's 2014 … why do I have to explain to my 5-year-old why people are mad at the buses when really they're mad at the people inside of the buses 'cause they're brown," Lane explained.

Through Border Angels, Lane found a mother, teenage sons, and a 23-year-old daughter who fled violence in Guatemala when gangs threatened to kill one of the sons for not joining.

During the long journey through Mexico riding on top of trains, the daughter was raped multiple times, and everything the family owned was stolen.

"When they came to our house, they were scared. We had two extra rooms, but they didn't want to be separated so they all piled into one room," Lane recalled.

After the word got out that he was hosting the family, someone created a Facebook page to organize a boycott of his business, Poppa's Fresh Fish Company in Logan Heights.

"Mark Lane needs a serious beating in front of his customers," one commenter wrote. "But then he serves crap food. His establishment is rat infested and smells like raw sewage!"

The site administrator was forced to take down the page after he received a cease and desist order, but that didn't stop the threats.

Threatening to kill a compassionate, loving man and his family simply for the act of extending kindness to a family of strangers? What kind of derangement inducing disease has embedded itself in the brains of these fucking people??

And make no mistake -- The Gadfly has no doubt that the people issuing the threats fancy themselves "family values" Christians and "real American" patriots too.

One thing is certain -- if the Son of Yahweh were to return to Earth anytime soon, The Gadfly is convinced that with one carefully introspective gaze upon the hateful bastards who brashly lay claim to the mantle of his divine benevolence, he'd smite them all in one fell swoop of molten bolts of lightning.

According to Tennessee's Secretary of State, DesJarlais led state Sen. Jim Tracy by just 35 votes, with a handful of provisional ballots to be counted.

DesJarlais' political future was all but written off two years ago after HuffPost uncovered court documents that showed DesJarlais, a physician, pressured a patient who was his mistress to get an abortion. It was later revealed that the pro-life congressman had approved of his first wife having two abortions, and that he'd had sex with at least two patients. Tennessee medical authorities found he had violated ethical standards by sleeping with his patients and fined him $500.

Tracy raised at least three times as much money as DesJarlais, and hit him late in the campaign on the affairs and abortions, but was unable to seal the deal with voters. Several reports suggested that evangelical voters in the district simply forgave DesJarlais.

If they'd only found a dead prostitute in the trunk of his car, he'd have won by a landslide instead of just 35 votes.

Just more evidence, as The Gadfly has been offering up for many years now, that the "family values" crowd of the right wing in this country is manifestly insane and unfit to govern anything other than their local Holy Hosanna Council -- and even then The Gadfly would be uncomfortable leaving them to their own devices without some measure of adult supervision.

Sadder yet -- the lunatics and mental midgets who would vote to re-elect an ethically challenged scumbag like DesJarlais are the very same people who believe Obama is the Anti-Christ.

All the more reason to pull your fat asses off the sofa, drag it to the polling places, and vote en masse to, once and for all, make the electoral power of these people as irrelevant as their crackpot, medieval mindsets are.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

People just need to begin acknowledging the simple, undeniable fact that there are a lot of racist fuckers in the GOP ranks still to this day. The Gadfly don't mind --- he just hates it when everyone denies the truth which is staring them straight in the goddamn face.

Hayes began the interview seeking clarification on whether Brooks viewed President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) order as “illegitimate,” to which the congressman responded, “Yes I do.” Brooks stated that he supported deporting the 500,000 DREAMers who have benefited from the president’s order, “and more.”

He also addressed the wave of unaccompanied minors who have recently crossed the border into the U.S., saying, “to the Democrats, the border security problem is really a question of where they come up with the money for the welcome mats and the Happy Meals.” Brooks elaborated, “they should not be fed and clothed for years, which apparently is the direction that the president wants to take us. Rather, those children should be taken care of here and very expeditiously reunited with their families back home.”

Yeah -- the day that The Gadfly listens to and actually gives a shit about some old Alabama cracker talking about a subject involving people of a different skin color than his own -- is the day The Gadfly will stick his pecker in a spinning weed whacker.

All silliness aside, The Gadfly is truly hoping that the GOP keeps shitting on the DACA Dreamers and the rest of the immigrants --- it seals their fate as an irrelevant political party a decade down the road.

The Gadfly kind of feels sorry for the old bigoted fuckers. But not really.

Time will prove The Gadfly right. In the meantime, watch the old school Bull Connor wannabe lamers flail about and pretend that they're still relevant in our modern society.

Two Alabama officials on Monday asked residents to pray that the state can help block the Environmental Protection Agency's new regulations on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, AL.com reported.

Public Service Commission President Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh (pictured above) slammed the new regulations.

"We will not stand for what they are doing to our way of life in Alabama," she said during a press conference at the Alabama Coal Association.

Later in the conference, Cavanaugh asked residents to pray for the state.

"I hope all the citizens of Alabama will be in prayer that the right thing will be done," she said.

Cavanaugh, along with other Alabama officials, will testify at an EPA hearing on the regulations in Atlanta on Tuesday.

PSC commissioner-elect Chip Beeker said that Alabama's coal was created by God and charged that the government shouldn't interfere with God's plan, according to AL.com.

Not that Obama really gives a flying shit about the Teatard lawsuit, but you do have to admit that Boehner and his merry band of ratfuckers has truly jumped the shark on this one -- to the extent that even some top GOP'ers are admitting as much.

Observe:

A pair of House Republicans admitted on Friday that it made little sense to sue President Barack Obama over executive overreach and, at the same time, urge him to act without Congress to solve the border crisis.

"Look, you can't say on the one hand that the president is overreaching by acting without legislative authority and direction and then refuse to give him legislative authority and direction in another area," Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a frequent voice of moderation in the House GOP conference, said on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown."

They're suing Obama because Obama issued an executive order to delay certain aspects of the ACA related to the individual mandate, the very same ACA health care law, btw, that the GOP has attempted to repeal and destroy 51 times. Yet when an issue comes along where they feel Obama isn't doing as they demand that he should, they insist that he use that same executive order power to appease their wishes. Can we say two-faced mother-fucking hypocrites?

How anyone can be of the belief that this modern day conservative movement has the intellectual acumen, integrity and moral courage to lead this nation forward in to an uncertain future, is eons beyond The Gadfly's evil liberal comprehension. And not that Hillary and the Democrats are pure and pristine, but jeebus fucking kripes on a popsicle stick, these conservatives truly are a malicious, gutless and conniving bunch of pricks on a level that has reached new heights of inanity and repugnance.

After stumbling out of the gate last month, militia activists in Texas are now appearing along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a vigilante campaign to “secure our border” in the midst of a refugee crisis involving unaccompanied children from Central America.

According to a handful of news reports out of Texas, the militiamen – who initially were nowhere to be seen after publicizing their plans last month – are now conducting patrols in some areas in hopes of stopping incursions by border crossers.

The San Antonio Express-News published a report this week that listed some of the groups that have been involved in the patrols and included numerous photos of the militiamen.

Strikingly, the patrols are being organized secretively, and all the militiamen involved have insisted on anonymity.

The photos published with the report show dozens of men wearing camouflage gear and carrying a variety of semi-automatic weapons, patrolling areas of the border of southern Texas. In some cases, the men are wearing masks; in others, their faces have been blurred by photo retouching.

Lol -- anonymity? The Gadfly thought they were great American patriots sacrificing their lives and limbs to save the rest of us from the marauding hordes of brown skinned Central American warrior moppets. Why wouldn't they want us to know who they are so that we might bestow our eternal appreciation upon them for the brave deeds which they are engaging in?

Did George Washington and the Minutemen insist on anonymity prior to engaging the British? Did Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie insist on anonymity before giving their lives to defend The Alamo? Did Audie Murphy insist on anonymity while single-handedly holding off an entire company of Germans for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a counter charge while wounded and out of ammunition? Hell no!!

So why are these "patriots" insisting on hiding behind masks and blurred photos?

Could it possibly be because their enemy looks something like this:

These "militia" clowns represent the true caliber of courage that resides in the sniveling, wimipish hearts of your modern-day conservatives and Teabagger types.

Running around the desert amped up on nicotine and Red Bull and just itching to put a bullet in the back of a terrified and fleeing immigrant woman and her toddler kids. Impressive.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Sometimes, when people try to use the weather to argue that climate change isn’t happening, it can help to patiently explain to them the difference between weather and climate, and how global warming refers to long-term changes in the latter.

But sometimes, as in the case of this Fox Nation article aggregated from the uber-conservativeWashington Times – which pretends to catch Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project in a “gotcha” moment for passing out ice cream on what turned out to be a chilly, rainy day in Denver — it’s hard to pretend that the deniers are actually interested in having a fact-based debate. In that moment, as CNN anchor Bill Weir brilliantly demonstrates, you’ve just got to acknowledge that the trolls should (and probably do) know better, and call them out for being … well, we’ll let him take it from here:

The only regrettable thing about Weir's testy outburst is that he then went and apologized for it.

Apologize for what? Stating the goddamn truth?

These wingnut climate change deniers absolutely are "willfully ignorant fucksticks" -- forever henceforth to be known as WIF's. Weir has no cause to apologize and if his bosses at CNN forced him to do so, fuck them too - they then are part and parcel of the problem of coddling these idiots and letting them get away with their easily debunked ignorance, and as such have miserably failed at their job of factually informing the American public.

Frankly, The Gadfly will stick with the advice of our nation's most intellectually gifted founding father as it pertains to dealing with ignoramuses:

Friday, August 1, 2014

It just never ends with these douchebags --- and no, there simply is no equivalent on the progressive side of the fence when it comes to this stuff, so stifle the "both sides do it" cockamamie bullshit.

After a National Rifle Association lobbyist equated a proposal to expand background checks to the Nazi policies of Adolf Hitler, a prominent guns rights activist defended the offensive comparison and took it further, comparing gun registration to the Nazi practice of tattooing Jews with identification numbers.

So the lawful registration of civilian owned WMD's is just the same as Hitler's Nazi's tattooing the Jews during WWII huh? Well, perhaps The Gadfly supposes, except for the inconvenient fact that the motive for tattooing the Jews was so that the Nazis, who were notoriously anal when it came to accounting practices, could keep an accurate running tally of exactly how many Jews they were sending off to the death camps to be exterminated.

Somehow The Gadfly doubts that a gun goon guy having to register his cherished collection of assault rifles with law enforcement equates to an automatic date with the Zyklon B gas chamber and cremation ovens.

The Gadfly was going to riff on the conservatives and the panties bunching hissy fit which they are presently in the throes of at discovering that former IRS commissioner Lois Lerner, who shockingly, and like millions of other Americans including The Gadfly, thinks that right wingers who spend all day ranting and raving on AM hate radio are "crazies" and "assholes."

Alas, The Gadfly had a much longer work day than planned and has not the energy to deal with that bit of idiocy at this time. Therefore, The Gadfly will defer the subject matter to another day. However, Charlie Pierce over at Esquire Politics Blog, wrote a masterpiece of a post this morning about just how embarrassingly batshit insane Boehner and the Teabilly controlled GOP house has become.

Here's an excerpt:

There are things that are just as bad as encasing the Founders on marble and marveling at their omniscience. For example, we cheapen our heritage when we cheapen its origins. Ever since the ongoing prion disease emerged full-blown during the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections, and ever since its symptoms became so garishly manifest thereafter, one of our political parties has chosen to cheapen our heritage, and to create a buffoon's history in which they claim to be heirs to people whose intellect and courage as far outdistances their own as a 747 outdistances a carriage as a means to get from Boston to Philadelphia.

Jefferson knew that calling the king a tyrant was an irrevocable step toward confrontation with the greatest military power on earth by a confederation of states that barely had an army worthy of the name. He knew that simply using the word was enough to get his neck stretched if things went badly. Yesterday, the House of Representatives, in one way or another, called a twice-elected president a tyrant. It said, in one way or another, that he had violated his oath of office. If either or both of those is true, then there is only one remedy under the Constitution these people claim to so revere, and it is not a frivolous lawsuit. It is to bring articles of impeachment against the president.

You don't take tyrants to court, goddammit. You risk everything to overthrow them. But the House of Representatives, and the Speaker who presides over it, knows that doing their constitutional duty is a political risk, so they don't have the sand to fulfill it. Jefferson was willing to break with a king he called a tyrant even if it meant facing down the British army. John Boehner is not willing to risk impeaching a president his House called a tyrant if it means a four-point drop in a CNN poll. When cowards try to make history, history is mocked.